City Officials Remove Unauthorized Renegade Butterfly Statue

This week, we broke the story on a lovely new statue celebrating the extinct Xerces blue butterfly. It mysteriously showed up in Golden Gate Park sometime around Earth Day.

City officials have sent out a press release about the statue and it sounds like the statue has been removed and taken to an undisclosed location. Their reasoning is this was put onto Golden Gate Park property without going through the proper channels for approval. To be expected in some ways, I suppose.

The press release states: 

“The Arts Commission must approve the temporary or permanent installation of any work of art on City and County of San Francisco (CCSF) property, or any proposal funded in whole or in part by City funds (regardless of its proposed location). This includes proposals initiated or funded by outside sponsors, such as individual artists, organizations, or commercial enterprises.

The manner in which this unsanctioned and unpermitted work that was surreptitiously installed without going through the proper process and procedure as outlined in the Art Commission’s Guidelines for Temporary Public Art installations poses numerous safety concerns. These include potential hazards and liability issues due to the unknown nature of the composition of the piece and unconfirmed installation methods used. The plinth will also be assessed for any damage resulting from the rogue installation where materials were affixed or glued to the pedestal.”

But they do go on to talk more about how they appreciate the statue and its message. City officials stated:

“The Arts Commission recognizes the importance of raising awareness for the protection of endangered species that face the threat of extinction and for the advocacy and conservation of wildlife and natural habitat protection.”

As far as other statues which have been removed from the park, there is more to the story there as well.
Several statues, which include the bronze Padre Junipero Serra (1906) statue, along with bronze statues of General Ulysses Simpson Grant (1908) and Francis Scott Key (1887) were defaced during a protest during the summer of 2020. They are currently being stored in a secure building pending any recommendations of the Monuments and Memorials Advisory Committee (MMAC) who have recently completed their work to review and recommend updates to the Policies & Guidelines related to monuments and memorial such as these within the Civic Art Collection. Their decision will likely come out sometime early summer.

The Arts Commission is also in the process of exploring any opportunities for future art i partnership “with local community groups and artists to provide space for and to help amplify the voices, stories and art of communities that have not been historically prioritized or represented.” It’ll be interesting to see what comes of these explorations and we truly do hope that communities which haven’t been prioritized in the past will be able to have their voices amplified by public art.

As a reminder, we first learned about this from a loyal reader, Christian Jurinka, who just sent in this fantastic tip:

“I was picnicking near hippie hill and decided to walk down to see if anyone was roller skating and dancing on JFK, near the De Young and saw a super cool new installation of a long extinct butterfly, called the Xerces blue butterfly. The plaque reads, “Driven to extinction by urban development and the destruction of the sand dunes of the San Francisco Peninsula. The Xerces blue was last seen in the Presidio on March 23, 1943.”

See the attached pictures. This is a beautiful piece of art and I feel like SF really hit it out of the park with this new installation.  It should be on everyone’s new list of cool, hidden gems to visit. Keep doing what you do!

Thanks,
Christian”

Thanks again, Christian for keeping an eye out for new and awesome things in SF. We hope we see this statue come back soon.